


Like a Window in Your Heart

by likeadeuce



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:24:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>XMen Movieverse post-X2.  A guy, a girl, and a shrimp boat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Window in Your Heart

_Losing love is like a window in your heart --_ \-- Paul Simon, "Graceland"

Scott never thought of Warren Worthington without remembering that line by Fitzgerald: _Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me._

Take this piece of paper.

Warren had written these directions down on a page of monogrammed Worthington Industries Stationery, in the lazy uneven hand of a man who didn't care if anyone understood his words. There were people on the payroll whose entire job description was to explain (or, more likely, to fabricate) what exactly the boss meant.

"Thanks," Scott had said, when Warren handed the note over his desk. Scott folded it into his breast pocket, vowing to check the details against at least two maps and his motorcycle's GPS. He didn't trust anyone's memory for details, especially not Warren's. That was one reason they'd fought so much, back in the brief period when they had led they X-men together.

"No problem." Warren answered, in the slow easy drawl that had nothing to do with regional dialect and everything to do with believing that time would bend to suit his convenience. "Enjoy your vacation of back-breaking physical labor." As Scott walked out of the office, Warren propped his feet on the desk and called, "Say 'hey' to Lee for me." Then he flashed the bright, quicksilver smile which was one reason that, as many times as they had fought, they always made up.

The other reason was Jean, but she didn't count anymore. Or maybe, six months after she had disappeared under the water at Alkali Lake, she was the only thing that did.

*

Now, standing in front of an old house on a South Carolina island, Scott tried to stretch out the ache of seven hours on a motorcycle, and stared once again at Warren's directions. "Dock behind the restaurant. . ." He didn't see anything like a restaurant, just a row of houses. He couldn't even call Warren to chew him out, because he hadn't brought an X-comm, only (at Ororo's stern insistence) a disposable cell phone that hadn't picked up any signal since he got off I-95 an hour ago. Scott contemplated giving up; maybe a higher power was telling him this was a stupid idea. The problem was, if he gave up on this plan, for once in his life, Scott Summers didn't have a plan B.

"Hey, Harley-Davidson. You looking for the Marlboro Man?"

At the unexpected voice, Scott whirled, hand rising instinctively to his temple. He cursed his own shoddy reflexes, but it was just a woman. He estimated she was about his own age, with an athletic build and sunbleached hair. A tight white T-shirt with a "Carolina Mudcats" logo strained against her breasts. She wore sandals, loose cargo pants that stopped halfway down her (tan, firm) calves. He wouldn't have called her pretty, but she looked good. Scott had always been a leg man.

Scott hadn't had a nonfunctional conversation since leaving Warren's office, over a week ago.

"The bike's a custom," he managed at last. Bracing his glasses, and closing his eyes just for good measure, he pulled off the helmet and ran fingers through his unruly hair. "It's got some Harley parts but a lot of other stuff. Nothing special," he lied.

"Huh." The woman cocked her head and moved toward him, walking around the bike. "'Cause the body looks like a Harley, but I heard the engine coming and I could have sworn that was a '51 Indian."

"Good ear," Scott said, trying to keep his jaw from hitting the ground. "The V-twin was a gift from a friend." Several birthdays ago Warren, in typical Worthington style, had shown up with the inner workings of one of America's greatest motorcycles stuffed in the back of his Navigator, and casually wondered whether Scott might have any use for them.

"Do you know if there's a restaurant around here?" Scott asked, desperately trying to ignore the serendipity of a hot blonde with great legs and motorcycle trivia just coming up to greet him. He might have suspected her of being Mystique, except that the shape-shifter had declared him "hopelessly dull" years ago, when they'd first met, and had shown very little interest in him since then. Even if he had still been an active X-man, Scott suspected that she would leave him out of any and all evil schemes, just on general principle.

Anyway, there was no good reason to be paranoid. Sometimes you just met people and they were who they were. It didn't matter. She wasn't what he was here for. "Ma'am, I'm looking for –"

"Jock and Maggie's Wreck?" The woman gestured toward the house. "The restaurant's right in front of you. I hope you weren't expecting a sign. If we advertised, then tourists might find it." She made a face, and Scott laughed a little, flattered that she (an owner? An off-duty employee? A neighbor?) was apparently excluding him from this odious category.

"Actually," said Scott, "I'm trying to find Captain Forrester. I heard he might have work."

"At the restaurant?" She started to walk toward the building, and he fell into step behind her.

"No, on a –" And when he said it out loud, it sounded strange. "—a boat. A – shrimp boat, I guess?" As they walked around the building, Scott could see the twin triangles of the New Cooper Bridge, far across the water, marking the entrance to Charleston.

"Jock Forrester is retired from the fishing business," the woman answered.

"Right, he said. I'm looking for – " He reached for the name Warren had given him. "Lee Forrester. I guess he runs that side now?" That must be the son, Warren's friend.

The woman turned back and frowned at him. "Why would Lee want to put you on crew?"

"Ahh –" The bluntness of the question took him aback, but he answered quickly. "Warren Worthington sent me down here. I guess he and Lee went to school together."

"They've known each other since they were kids," she answered. "Fathers were friends. But that doesn't answer my question. Give me your hand."

The request was so unexpected that Scott complied without thinking. She studied his palm so intently, for a moment, that he thought she was trying to read something in it. Then her fingers traced the curve of his hand, turned it over, and felt around his nails. Looking for calluses. Well, he had plenty. Broken cuticles and grease stains from fiddling with the bike, too. He offered the left hand, then, and he was pretty sure she took an extra moment to feel his ring finger. She could go ahead. He wasn't leaving a wife behind.

"Satisfied?" he said tersely.

"No offense. It's just that most of Warren's friends don't even check their own oil." Pointing at the boat tied to the dock, she said, "That's _Arcadia_. She ships out on Sunday. She's a twin-rig trawler with a five-man crew. That's plenty of work for everyone, and we can't afford any slackers." She offered her hand. "I'm Lee Forrester, by the way." Gravely, she added. "As our mutual friend obviously failed to mention, I'm a girl."

Lee's grip was firm. "Scott Summers. And I figured that out. Eventually." Outwardly, he was smiling, but under the surface he fantasized about stripping Warren's wings, making a pillow out of the feathers and stuffing them down his throat.

"Warren told me you were perceptive," Lee said, still serious, and then that smile burst over her face again. "Just kidding. He said you were _just_ like this. You got any other skills?"

"I work hard. I've been around commercial fishing boats." Not since he was a kid in Alaska, but it was technically true. "And, in case you ever need it, I can fly." Lee's stride broke and she turned to stare, blatantly, at his shoulders. "Not like Warren flies. But –" And then he realized that his hand had, unconsciously, gone to his glasses. "I'm surprised you know."

"Are you kidding? Worthington's such a damn show off. We've been sailing together since we were kids. When we got out on the water together, there's no way he could resist showing me. And you must be from that school of his. The one he always talked about – or, more like, he always talked about how he couldn't talk about it." Stepping toward Scott, she asked, "Is it your eyes?"

He nodded.

Lee leaned back so that her shirt moved even tighter against her breasts and asked, with a half-smile. "X-ray vision?"

"No! But it is my eyes. I –" He touched the bridge of his nose now, pushing the glasses up. "I have to wear these all the time."

"Or what? Are they dangerous?"

"They're powerful," he answered automatically, and realized even as he spoke that he was quoting the Professor. "Power is neutral. Danger depends on the way you control power. And the choices you make about it. These glasses let me control the power."

"So. . .it's not dangerous?"

"No," he lied, mentally adding, _Not to you._

"So I don't guess you'll be able to use it to stun shrimp, or anything useful? Cause a few days into the cruise, we might want a break from all those nets."

Scott frowned. "I'm hired? You don't care -- ?"

"You're willing to work. You're not dangerous. At least I know you're not boring. And --" She slapped his shoulder. "I bet you know some great stories about Warren. If nothing else, we can talk shit about him. Now –" Lee gestured at the restaurant. "You want some boiled peanuts, collard greens, shrimp and fried grits, I bet." Before he could open his mouth to say that he was only sure what one of those things was, she said, "Only two acceptable answers. 'Yes' and 'Hell, yes.'"

"Yes, then." He smelled something nice and fried, then remembered he had eaten half a bagel that morning in Newport News, and some coffee from a gas station just south of that tourist trap on the Carolinas' border. He probably ought to be hungry. Ever since Alkali, he'd had to remind himself to eat, and he didn't always succeed.

"No wonder Warren calls you 'Slim." Lee looked him up and down, critically, and shook her head. "We'll have to do something about that while you're here."

*

Lee had a satellite phone, for use on the boat, and she was more than happy to let Scott play with her toy. When he was alone in the cabin, he dialed Warren.

"I'm in Charleston," Scott said, as soon as the phone picked up. "I'm on Lee Forrester's boat, in Charleston, and I'm plotting out ways to kill you."

"You don't like her, Slim?" Warren asked, in that perpetually half-asleep voice. "I put a lot of thought into this arrangement."

"What I don't like, Warren, is that you didn't share any of the thought with me. You didn't tell me –"

"That she's a girl? That she's a knockout? That she likes engines and military history and Carolina League baseball? Or do you want to know the part where she's never been able to stay in a relationship for more than six weeks?"

Scott squeezed his eyes shut and felt the rage building behind his temples. Warren had really done this – flipped through his enormous Rolodex and picked Scott out the perfect rebound girl. "I don't want a rebound girl. I don't want to rebound. I just wanted to get a job on a boat so I can have some time away –"

"If you meant 'monastery,' you should have said 'monastery.' What you said was 'boat.' Lee's the best shrimp boat captain I know. "We used to sail together –"

"Is that all you did together?" Scott snapped. The only way this could be more insulting was if Warren were trying to pass him off on one of his exes.

"In point of fact, yes, it was. I don't sleep with women who can kick my ass."

This was possibly the most ridiculous lie that Scott had ever heard from Warren, and it had some pretty stiff competition. Betsy Braddock could kick his ass – and had, on a regular basis. His wife, Candy, probably still did and . . .well, Jean could of course. But that was high school stuff; too much water, too many bridges ago. Out loud, Scott just said, "There are people who can't kick your ass?"

"Theoretically," Warren said. "But you know, I did stop being a superhero for a reason."

"You mean besides the corner office at Worthington Industries?" _Different from you and me_, Scott thought, and briefly wondered what it would be like to live in a world where you didn't actually care who could beat you up. Warren could pay people to cover his ass, these days, too.

"Speaking of Worthington Industries, I'm afraid, they actually expect me to work for a living and I have to catch my car to this benefit –"

"That's working?"

"Your head would explode in five minutes tops, if you had to do this," he answered. "Look, I'm sorry it didn't work out with Lee and the boat. If you're really determined to break your back on your time off, then Worthington's Construction Subsidiary –"

"Oh, I took the job. Job's a job. It's nothing _but_ a job, though."

The call lapsed into silence, for a moment, and then Warren said. "She'd want you to live, you know. When my father – you know, when he –"

"When your father died, what? You went and got a new one, preferably a flakey one that wouldn't mind it when you dumped him after six weeks?" Once he had spoken, he wanted to take it back. There was a reason he was trying to avoid talking to people very much; he wasn't good at it lately, even with people he knew well.

Scott didn't apologize. He tried to form the words, and all he could think was _My parents died, too. My parents died first, and now Jean, and I don't even know what's next so don't fucking lecture me._ "I was going to say," Warren told him, "that there's a difference between mourning and grieving."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I can't tell you that," Warren answered. "But you'll know when you've figured it out."

*

Lee was right about the work. There wasn't any room for slackers, and while the rigs were running, there was plenty to keep every member of the crew busy. Scott always had his hands full, and just a few hours into the first haul, he could feel the satisfying, exhausting ache in his muscles. This was exactly what he had been looking for when he came down here – intense, physical work that actually produced concrete, observable results. Results measured in enormous piles of shrimp, granted. Nothing here was going to change the world. But, at the moment, he was all right with that.

Aside from Scott and Lee, the crew consisted of three men who had obviously worked together for a while. They performed most of their tasks without needing instructions, but kept up a playful (and often profane) stream of banter as they did it. Occasionally, Lee would call out some orders, in language equally as colorful as that of the men. The way they worked together made the whole process look seamless and easy but Scott, who needed all of his concentration to keep up, quickly realized it wasn't. A dozen times in the first hour, he found himself out of synch. Soon, it was obvious that Lee was devoting most of her attention to making sure Scott didn't screw up – which was no more than he deserved – but she did it in a nudging, teasing way that only embarrassed him the first few times. Besides, Scott prided himself on his fast learning curve, and by the end of the day he felt like he was almost up to speed.

When the last nets were hauled up, Lee waved at all of the men. "Okay, great haul, guys. Now –" She came up behind Scott, slapped his shoulder and said, "All work, no play?"

"That's right!" laughed one of the other fishermen. "Send the new guy down after the beer."

"Yeah," added another. "Make the kid earn his keep. What did you hire that greenhorn for, anyway?"

Scott felt his muscles tense, but Lee's laugh rang out like music. "Why do you think? 'Cause he's pretty." Pointing to the other men, she spun around on her heel. "You think I want to be out at sea with nothing but y'all's ugly mugs?" Then she seemed to trip and stumble backwards into Scott. Tilting her head, she looked up at him and smiled. "I deserve something pretty to look at." The others joined in a chorus of boos and whistles in response, and Scott felt the heat rise to his own face. He didn't feel quite comfortable, with hands on her like that, but he was afraid she would slip – yes, of course, that was it – if he let her go. Although, he observed, she had been pretty damn sure on her feet before.

"You want to help me find that beer?" Scott asked her.

Lee led him down below the deck. He could still hear the guys laughing and joking above. "Don't mind them," said Lee. "They're obnoxious as all hell, but they're good people. Considering how long it's been since I've taken _Arcadia_ out, they show a lot of loyalty."

Scott decided to gloss past the part where _they_ weren't necessarily the ones making him uncomfortable. It wasn't as though Lee were harassing him. She was just, obviously, interested. He couldn't deal with 'interested' right now, but that wasn't her fault. "How come you haven't been out for a while?" he said, trying to deflect the subject. "You seem like an old pro."

Lee stopped in front of a small refrigerator, and pulled it open. Scott reached in to retrieve a couple six-packs -- cheap, canned stuff that would taste like horse-piss, and still feel great at the end of this long day. When he looked up, Lee was tapping her hands against the side of the fridge, not quite looking at him. "My dad's been sick," she said, finally. "I've been staying with him, and – well, it's cleared up for a little while, and he pretty much ordered me to go out on this cruise so we don't make each other crazy."

"I'm sorry," said Scott, a suspicion starting to flare in his mind.

"Don't be sorry." Lee grabbed a beer off the ring and popped the tab. Wiping her mouth with the back of one hand, she said, "You didn't do it."

"I know, but –" Scott asked the next part, not wanting to, but needing an answer. "He's doing better?"

"For now," she said shortly, "That's why we've got the phone." She took one of the six packs and turned, ducking to fit under the door frame. She obviously didn't want to dwell on the subject, but Scott could hear the answer in what she wasn't saying. _Dammit, Warren_, he thought. _The only thing I need less than a fixup is some kind of life lesson about loss and grieving, and seeing how everybody else does it better than I do. _

Lee stopped to look back at him. "If you want to call somebody, you know – your girlfriend?"

"I can't call her." His jaw clenched, and he gave an answer that seemed to bypass his brain altogether. "She left."

"Ahh." Lee looked away. "I thought I was being so smooth there. Like back on the shore, with the –" She mimed looking at his hands – "ring check. Serves me right. I should have just asked."

"You should have," Scott agreed, hoping he didn't sound like as much of a dick as he half-suspected he did. "For the record, I don't have a girlfriend, and I'm not looking. I don't know what Warren told you –"

"It wasn't Warren," she answered quickly. "It's just that I like you. Don't be embarrassed, it's a compliment. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, and it never has to come up again. We can still hang out and talk crap about Worthington, right? I hope I haven't totally blown it."

"It's fine," Scott assured her. "Don't give it another thought."

*

In his mind, Scott had his hand wrapped in Lee Forrester's hair. He was holding her from behind, the other arm around her breasts. She bent over the bed in the state room, legs wrapped around his hips, letting out soft moans of pleasure as he thrust into her body.

Scott was extremely good at visualization. This had nothing to do with his mutation; it was just the way his brain worked. The Professor had noticed this capacity right away. It made Scott a formidable chess player, an excellent point guard in intramural basketball games, and the first person that Xavier called on to formulate combat strategy.

It also meant that, when his thoughts inclined that way, he could have one hell of a sexual fantasy life. Jean, of course, had picked this up early on and used it. She might whisper something to him – _silk handkerchief, massage oil, office chair_ \-- and leave him alone for a while to formulate his own scenario. Then, when he wasn't expecting it, she would slip in to his mind and give the scene a few tweaks. They sometimes made a competition of it, seeing how long the other could hold out, so that the orgasms they finally shared might have been building up for three or four days.

That had never seemed weird, until he had to think about it from a distance. All relationships made sense, he guessed, when you were in them. They never did when they were over.

Now, he stood in the wheelhouse of the _Arcadia_, alone with the stars and the navigation instruments, imagining exactly what it would feel like to fuck Lee Forrester. _Fuck,_ he kept thinking. Not 'make love,' not even 'have sex.' In his mind, he was always – what was another stupid word? -- banging her. Not looking at her face, not thinking about the way she laughed and how good she was at her job and how funny and smart she was, or even how attractive. At best, he was thinking about the tattoo that peeked out of her sleeve, whether she had more of those, whether she had one on her lower back, too, one that he could rub against before she lifted her hips, and he pushed inside her, while his hand tightened in her hair and –

His hand, he realized, had slid down below his belt. He was hard, he was touching himself – through thick work-pants, but still. It was ridiculous, standing up here, thinking about having sex with someone who obviously wanted to have sex with him, as though there were something inherently moral about abstinence, about denying something that both of them wanted. Even the nuns at the charity home had made mincemeat of that distinction. If you had impure thoughts, if you indulged them – adultery of the heart, et cetera.

Scott had been through this thought process before, when Jean was in medical school and they were technically broken-up -- 'technically' meaning 'actually and in every possible sense of the word,' with the trivial exception that they had sex almost every time they saw each other. Still, Jean had insisted they were dating other people; she, he knew perfectly well, had done so, and Scott had made an effort. At least, he had until Betsy slapped him in the face for thinking about Jean while she was giving him a blow job. That, maybe, should just have been a lesson about dating telepaths when you loved other telepaths, but he chose to take it as evidence that his heart had never been in it.

He and Jean had finally gotten back together, though he sometimes suspected that this was due to sheer persistence on his part. He didn't like those suspicions, the nagging inner voices that told him Jean would have been happy to stay friends-with-occasional-benefits if he hadn't insisted on an exclusive relationship. He had, especially, tried to work on silencing those voices since Logan showed up. And now, of course, the doubts didn't matter.

And that was the thing. They really didn't matter. Loyalty had once been required, but that was over. Done. Past. There was nobody left to be loyal to.

_Are you grieving or mourning?_ The voice echoed in his head, and he couldn't decide if it was Warren's or Jean's.

And then there was another voice. It took him a second to realize this one was outside his head. "Are you ready to switch shifts?"

Scott turned to look at Lee. "No, he said. No, not really. I'd like to stay up here and look at the stars."

*

The cabin wasn't really long enough for them both to stretch out comfortably, so Lee and Scott sat on opposite benches, their feet reaching across at a diagonal. Lee had kicked off her shoes and her bare foot looked ready to slide into his lap at the smallest invitation. But for the moment they just sat, taking in the quiet of the ocean.

"I shoot concussive force beams," Scott said, breaking the silence. "Out of my eyes. They're red. They make everything look red. They let me see in the dark, too. So these aren't really sunglasses at all. Or, really the sun is already in my eyes. The glasses keep it away from everyone else. If that makes any sense."

"Oh, it makes perfect sense." Her words sounded solemn, but a smile played at her lips. "It's just the weirdest pickup line I've ever heard."

"It's not –" Scott quickly pulled his feet off of the opposite bench and tried to sit up straight, although with the cabin's cramped space, his legs pulled up close to him. "How is that a pickup line?"

"I have super powers? How is it _not_ a pickup line? Come on, remember, I grew up around Warren. Not that there ever _was_ anything with us, but I know how these things work."

"Lee, I'm not trying to –" Scott raised a hand to his forehead. He didn't know what he was trying to do. It didn't help that the picture he'd formed in his mind of the two of them refused to go away. His head was starting to throb, and he wished he could just blast something to let the tension out and, oh God. . .Score one for the obvious metaphor. He got to his feet, turned around, and was about to face her again when a buzz rang out from the satellite phone.

Lee crossed to the console. A name ran across display screen, and she swore under her breath. "Middle of the night, this can't be good."

"I'll go," Scott stood, then immediately felt like a coward for embracing the excuse.

"No, don't –" Lee held up a hand to him as she went for the phone. He pretended not to hear her protest, and took the opportunity to go down below. Instead of going to bed, though, he stopped at the galley halfway between Lee's stateroom and the mens' quarters. Wondering what the hell he was doing, he started tapping out a pattern on the table, trying to sort out the last few days' events in his head. _What's the difference between mourning and grieving, anyway?_ He didn't have Warren there to ask, and Jean persisted in not answering, even in his imagination.

_Some help you guys are,_ he thought.

A while later, he heard Lee's footsteps come down the hatch, but instead of moving toward him, she slammed the door to her stateroom. After a moment's indecision, Scott made his way down the narrow hall, and knocked. "Lee?" No answer. "Everything okay?"

"Lawyers," she called back. "Stupidity. You don't want to know."

"All right – are you --?"

The door jerked open in front of him. "Come in, for fuck's sake." She had grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into the room before he processed that she was almost naked.

"Lee?" he gasped.

"Shut up." She pushed him against the door, forcing it shut, and started kissing him, hard, on the mouth. Her bare breasts pushed against his shirt. His hand found her back, and glided down over bare skin until he reached the worn elastic waistband of her underwear. He wasn't trying to speak but she kept saying, "Shut up shut up shut up," as her lips traveled across his cheeks and chin, then down his neck. In return, he kissed her hair and relaxed his legs so that she could rub against him. His arousal was fast – 'finally!' his body seemed to say – and he groaned as her hand slid down and brushed him through his clothes. Lee reached to the bottom of his T-shirt and ordered, "Put your hands up." She started to giggle and choked out, in ragged breaths, "This is a robbery."

"Lee!" Startled by her laughter, Scott tried to step back but his head hit the doorframe. "Hold on!"

"Make up your goddamn mind!" She jerked suddenly away from him, and crashed onto the half-made bunk.

"I'm just not sure –" Scott heard his own heavy breath, watching as Lee reached down to pull off her underwear.

"Not sure of what?" She was slipping the cotton garment off her leg. "Not sure this is something you want?" Scott couldn't tear his eyes from her body. Her stomach looked hard, with well-defined abdominal muscles. The black ink of a tattoo showed on her side, and another seemed to wind around her arm.

He couldn't look away, but he couldn't move.

Lee sat up, crossing arms over her chest. Scott made out the pattern of two intricate tattoos on her upper arms. When she laced them together, they formed a sort of shape, like a ball in the middle with long eagle feathers out to each side. "If you don't want me, that's fine. I've taken rejection before. If you're really, genuinely not interested, we can forget all about this. But if this is some damn thing about some girl who left you --"

"Jean didn't leave me," Scott answered, surprised at his own voice. "She died."

"I know that. I'm not an idiot, Scott. People aren't very fucking original, you know. They don't quit their jobs and sign up on shrimp boats and act like they're scared to talk to anybody, just because somebody broke up with them. I know what mourning looks like. So if you don't think you like me, that's fine, but if this is because you think your dead girlfriend is going to show up demanding an apology -- " She rolled over, her thighs and ass as tan and hard as the rest of her. A sort of mandala covered the small of her back. "Just get the hell out."

The stasis broke. He stepped toward her. "I don't want to leave."

Lee turned back, and as her arms unfolded from her chest, a smile spread across her face. "All right, then," she said. "It's about goddamn time."

*

Scott lay down in a field of flowers, across the lake from the main campus of Xavier's School. "This isn't right," he said. "I'm dreaming."

"You sure about that?" asked Jean, her fingers drifting over his face. "What was your first clue? And don't say that I'm supposed to be dead. That one's too easy. You never did go for easy answers."

"Well – then –" He looked up in her eyes. Jean always had the warmest eyes, sharp flecks of gold beneath the deep green. "I'm supposed to be on a boat. It's wet, it's unstable, it's a little bit cold."

"Cold?" Jean's hand slid past his face and down to his bare chest. "You're still cold after all that? Don't tell Lee. She'll be disappointed."

"And what about you, Jean? Are you disappointed?"

"At what? At you? For not falling over dead as soon as I did?"

"For liking someone else. For not mourning long enough."

"Hmm." Jean's brow furrowed. "Are you grieving or mourning?"

"What's the difference?" he demanded. "How am I supposed to know?"

"I'm the last one who can tell you, sweetie," Jean said, her voice even and rational. "I'm dead. We don't do either one." She reached into the grass and plucked a small blue flower off of a weed. Twirling it in her hand, she mused, "I wonder which one Lee is doing."

"What does Lee have to do with this?"

Jean shook her head. "For someone who prides himself on being so damn observant, there are times you don't pay much attention. I'm dead --"

He frowned. "Stop saying that."

"I'm dead, and I notice more than you do."

"Dammit!" Scott sat bolt upright. He would have knocked Jean over, only she wasn't there anymore.

*

Scott sat bolt upright. He woke in an empty cabin, Lee's cabin. Lee's bed. The covers were mussed, but his clothes lay neatly folded at the foot of the bed. He reached up to feel his glasses, realizing Lee must have put them in place before she left. Across his chest lay the ripped T-shirt they had used to improvise a blindfold, once things got so fast he couldn't trust the glasses to stay in place. By that time, he had a map of her body – every curve, every inch of ink – well in his mind. He was very good at visualization.

Sliding into his clothes, Scott walked back up to the wheelhouse. Lee sat on one bench, knees pulled up to her chest. She kept her arms around them, rocking slowly.

He knocked lightly on the door. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It was good. I already said that. Are you looking for something in writing?"

"I didn't mean us." He walked toward her, settling a hand on her shoulder. "I mean whatever happened to upset you. The phone call."

Lee shook her head. "I already did everything I could do about that." Making a circular motion with her hand. "I turned us around." Now, when Scott looked up, he could see the beginnings of sunrise on the horizon. Behind them. East was behind them, they were pointed west, back to the coast.

Scott spread his fingers over her arm and cleared his throat. "Is it your father? He's doing worse?"

Her breath came out in a sharp, hard laugh. "He's not getting any better."

"Lee, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't do it."

"I know, but. . ."

"It doesn't matter now." She stood, shaking off his touch, and went to the wheel. "You might be able to help, though. I guess you know a thing or two about burying somebody." Flipping a few switches, she said, "Son of a bitch shot himself."

He stepped toward her and said again, stupidly, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she answered. "I hate his fucking guts."

*

Lee hated the dress that she wore to the funeral. She cursed it, every chance she got.

"I'm showing too much leg," she said into Scott's ear. "I look like a fucking whore. Get me the hell out of here." Lee looked fine, of course. The skirt was on the short side, and she had to be hot in the long sleeved blazer she was wearing to cover her tattoos, but she looked fine. After the fourth or fifth time she complained, Scott stopped contradicting her, and simply wrapped his arm tighter around her waist.

He didn't know the etiquette for attending a family funeral with someone you had only known for a little over a week. Whatever Emily Post would have to say on the matter, he supposed, would be complicated when the new friend was the person you'd been sleeping with for almost that long. Prudence would probably have dictated that Scott keep a low profile. At least, he thought, they should be discreet about their relationship – for Lee's sake, to avoid awkward questions later, whenever things had settled. Lee, however, didn't want to let go of Scott's hand. She leaned up against him, almost all the time, and whispered in his ear, not just complaints about the dress but stories about the other mourners – some cruel, some funny, many seemingly irrelevant. "This probably isn't very healthy," she admitted to him, once. "I'm not stupid. We just met. I know it's not healthy. But if you weren't here, I don't know if I could make myself stand up."

After the burial, they all gathered in the dining room of Jock Forrester's restaurant. Warren arrived, about half an hour into the reception.

"I'm sorry," he began, reaching out to Lee. "I just flew in from the West Coast –"

"And boy are your wings tired." For once, she let go of Scott long enough to pull Warren into a hug. His wings were, in fact, well harnessed beneath his suit jacket. Scott knew this, of course, though most people just thought that broad shoulders ran in the family. "People are going to say words in a minute." Lee looked up at Warren. "You can talk about how he hated your guts."

Warren put a hand on Lee's hair and looked down at her. "He didn't think I was good enough for his little girl."

"Well, you're not," Lee answered matter-of-factly. "But we didn't need him to tell us that." She reached out to squeeze Scott's hand. "Now this guy, Dad would have liked. You want a drink?"

"No, I –" Warren began, then when Lee gave him a look, said meekly, "Yes, please. A vodka and anything, at this point."

"Good," she said. "I need to be good and drunk for my big speech, and I need some company." She nudged Scott again. "This guy is being sober for me." She stood on her toes and kissed him, then left toward the bar.

"I'm sorry," Warren said, as soon as she was out of earshot.

"Don't be. You didn't do it," Scott answered, before he thought.

"But I did, sort of." When Scott looked at him, Warren explained. "I knew Jock was dying. He was diagnosed over two years ago, and there was never any long-term hope. He and Lee were so damn close, I knew it had to be ripping her up, but she never talks to anyone. Not about important stuff. And then you came by and you were – the way you were. I thought about you and I thought about Lee, and I guess it seemed like fate."

"Funny kind of fate."

"I figured he would hang on another year, at least. He was supposed to be in remission. I was thinking, you'd have a more gradual kind of getting to know each other and then –" He shrugged. "I guess he wanted to do it while Lee was gone, so she didn't have to be the one to find him. I guess she's pissed off, though."

"Extremely," Scott confirmed. "On the other hand, it means she got through denial pretty fast." A warm tremor ran through him as he remembered the physical manifestation of Lee's denial.

"Anger comes after denial?" Warren frowned, and Scott could almost see him counting in his head. Then he squeezed Scott's shoulder. "Between you and me, I always thought that five stages thing was bullshit."

Scott tried to remember if he had ever felt that, about Jean. Denial. How long had it taken him to believe she was gone? Why was it harder to believe as time went on? "That reminds me." He turned to Warren. "Something you said that's been driving me crazy. What's the difference between mourning and grieving?"

Warren shrugged. "I have no idea. I was hoping you could tell me." Just then, Lee approached and handed him a tumbler of clear liquid. Looking at both of them, Warren repeated. "I'm sorry. Sorry to both of you about trying to pull this whole fixup."

"Don't be. You didn't do it." Wrapping her arm around Scott's waist, she said. "We did." And, as Lee Forrester kissed him softly on the cheek, Scott realized that it was true.


End file.
